(Original post by L i b)
1. I'm pretty much OK with this. If we were to have Parliament in Dublin it really ought to be at College Green or somewhere similarly dignified. The monarchy is my only red-line.

2. With devolution, we have a problem. The Northern Irish will not accept home rule on an all-Ireland basis. They'd kick off.

I don't think NI would be as much as a problem as history tells us. They kicked up a fuss and all they would do is kick and scream at each other as usual, so not much new there. If they decided to arm themselves they would find it much harder getting guns in than they did in the early 1900's particularly with no Kaiser. Even if they did manage to arm themselves I don't think the army would be bordering on mutiny like what happened before. One problem might be the northern Irish serving the the army already.

Now days with devolution basically everywhere it might be different plus the fact that the other 26-counties would have entered a union again would mean that the paranoia of home rule being a step to independence wouldn't be an issue like again, it was before.

The idea that we should move towards a 'Federation' of commonwealth countries has been around for a long time and was one of the best alternatives for the development of the British empire.

Effectively, each nation like Ireland, Scotland, England, Australia and Canada would have been given autonomous self government, ie being allowed to run their own affairs while keeping the pound, while an Imperial Government (Directly elected from each country and based in London) would have kept control of foreign and military policy, as well as development of the colonies.

It was actually strongly suggested as the future of the empire, but broke down due to the costs associated with electing and getting delegates to London, as well as the worry that England would dominate it, but had it have taken place when first suggested then it could have solved the Ireland Problem before 1916 occured in a similar way to the peaceful transfer of soverignty to the other dominans.

That said, given where we are, we should probably just be good friends who help each other out when asked, no need to do more than that